iOS 8.3 - More free space?

You could try resetting all settings on the iPhone and if that fails do a clean restore from your last back up.

I have been watching this issue for a while now. Since, I guess the first installment of IOS 8, I've been befuddled with the devices storage avail. For example, After discovering only 3 GB available on my iPad Air, I checked the storage and the usage of my apps and ect. Now out of 20 apps, only two welded data in the GB. One for Music 4.7 GB (Audible mainly) and the Videos 8.3 (which I have to literally go through and delete them despite not electing to actually download the file to my device). That being said, there is no way the remaining 18 apps, all indicating they are consuming storage space in the low MB's each, can be totaling out the remaining 30.6 GB.

In the past, to fix this problem only required me to sync up my iPad Air physically with my iTunes on my PC. That is not the case as of my recently update version of IOS 8.3. Where is all this space going to? I am constantly deleting contents from my device and refuse to take or keep photos on it less it is for the desktop and lock screen. Everything and all things get erased as my rule. Still there is never more than 10 GB avail on it at any given time since the intro of IOS 8.

I have that same iTunes version and have newest iPad Air 2 with now 8.3. I backed up, did a completely restore this morning and now my "other" says 45 GBs and my Photos show 3GBs. Something is definitely not right since this 8.3 update. Same happens with my iPhone 6.

iPhone 5S. ios 8.3. All the photos are there and in the correct order but most of the space they take is now recorded as 8.3 gb of "other". But my remaining available space is about the same. No big deal i guess, tho certainly not confidence inspiring.

I had several versions of this issue that were addressed (not solved) in a variety of ways.

Before 8.3, I upgraded from an iPhone 5 to 6 plus. The photos appeared to be synced twice, but I could only see one version in the photos app. When I turned off the sync to iTunes, I was still showing several GB of data on the phone that was also taking up space in the iCloud backup. For this one:

1. Turned off the photo backup for iCloud backup.
2. Backed up the phone to get a fresh backup that did not have the local phantom photos in the backup.
3. Restored my phone from the backup in step 2.
4. Synced to iTunes and re-selected the option to Sync photos.
5. Turned the photo backup back on in iCloud backup.

For the 2nd issue I am currently experiencing sounds more like what everyone else here is talking about. When using iCloud photo, my phone has the download option enabled and has no issues. My iPad has a smaller hard drive so I use the optimize storage. The iPad now says there is no hard drive space available, but when I look at the iPad through iTunes, it shows 18GB free. For now, I have just disabled iCloud photo on my iPad to get the space back. Not an ideal solution, but it is slowly, and I mean slowly, freeing up hard drive space as I type this post.

This was the first real issue I have ever run into that had no easy to find solution, but also tanks my ability to function on my iPad. Therefore you have all just read my first discussion board post ever.... Thanks Apple!

Found just today that looking in my videos folder (the perm one on my ipad) that there is an EDIT button. It appears I have to manually delete the movies after I am done watching them. It is nice when people change locations for deleting content. It use to be in settings but it was moved. Now I have 37. GB of available space instead of the 4.1 I had previously. Too bad I had to purge a lot of things before I discovered this.

It's May 3, 2015, and I just updated to iOS 8.3 on my iPhone 5s. Strangely, I also see the available space indicated in iTunes has increased by almost 3 Gigs.

The phone seems to be working and everything seems to be there.

I did a hard reset and nothing changed. Photos seem to be in order.

I don't use iCloud for my photos. I sync them through iTunes from a folder on my desktop Mac.

Just wanted to add my case to the bunch.

Hope nothing else is "wrong." Maybe it's a "good" thing. Maybe some extra things that were hiding is now deleted? Perhaps like emptying the trash? Who knows.

I found a duct-taped solution, I plugged into iTunes and filled the space that iTunes said was available with songs (luckily I have enough), it took a second for my computer to think about it but, it did it. I then unsynced those playlists that I added and wham! All the space that they took up was now available again. I'm not sure what's causing this, it's like the phone is deleting things from its registry but not actually deleting them from storage so, it's telling iTunes that it has a certain amount available but when it does its diagnostic, it realizes it doesn't. So, what I effectively did was overwrite all those old files, that it didn't know about, with songs and then clean the songs out, leaving clean space.

Hope this helps!

Hi

i have a similar problem, I have not updated to the new iOS 2015 and I haven't even updated the previous ISO update, I have version 7.1.1(11d201) and I was planning on installing the new iOs but I needed 1.8gb free space. All of a sudden when I checked my fee space I have 10.8gb free space when normally it would have around 500mb free. I have checked my gallery and it shows no data used !?? Even though ally pictures and videos are still there ?!?

now I'm thinking twice of installing the new iOS. What should I do??

Hello everyone,

This issue has been driving me nuts for a while and I thought I would add my own experience. I am currently using the latest versions of iOS9 on an iPhone 6+ and an iPad Mini 3 (both 128 GB and purchased late 2014). I have been using the photos app synced via iTunes 12.3.1.23 to store the same set of 10,862 photos on each of these devices. I do not use iCloud or iCloud Drive for photos. All apps and firmware are up to date with the latest versions available (as of 16th November 2016). This post is a bit number heavy so apologies in advance.

I cleaned-out my iPad Mini this morning, reset everything and set-up as a 'new iPad'. FYI I added 55.75 GB audio, 24.22 GB video, 1.58 GB apps, 1.21 GB documents and data. I left photos to the very last. That's when the fun began. While the photo sync was in progress the iTunes status bar reported that I had added 21.76 GB of photos. 'Other' was measured at 1.53GB and there was 8.5 GB of free space. As soon as the last photo had been copied and the sync was complete the status bar showed no photos, 'Other' shrank to 1.23 GB. The Free space had grown to 28.19 GB!!! Still connected to iTunes, I opened the iPad and checked that the photos had transferred. They were all there.

Then I clicked sync again (without the iPad being ejected after the initial sync): photos 21.76 GB; Other 1.53 GB; free space 8.47 GB. Great while it was being synced but at the end: NO photos reported; Other reported as 19.44 GB; free space 9.98 GB. Er...What?

I ejected the iPad. All items were there. I checked the usage - all the numbers for songs, videos, photos were correct. Free space was reported as 9.6 GB.

I reconnected the iPad to iTunes: it reported 0 GB of photos, 19.44 GB 'other', 9.98 GB of free space. When I clicked 'sync' this changed to 9.30 GB of photos, 19.74 GB 'other', 2.72 GB of free space while the sync was in progress. When the sync completed it reverted to 0 GB of photos, 19.44 GB 'other', 9.98 GB of free space. The growing and shrinking 'free' space and bogus reporting of 'Other' is very irritating and limiting. I have almost 10 GB of free space before I click sync then only 2.72 while the sync is on.

The problem has been ongoing since the Photos app first appeared. I miss iPhoto.

OK, I think I found the solution to the "Other" area taking a large amount of space. On my iPhone using 9.3, my Other space was taking up about 5 GB. I tried erasing all data and settings and restoring, which seemed to work, but the next morning I was again out of room. After some additional troubleshooting I went to the Apple Store, they reset the firmware, and set it up as a new phone with absolutely no apps. The next morning the Other space started creeping up to 4-5 GB. It the occurred to me that I the problem started when my available iCloud space went to 50 GB, and I started using that space to back up some key files on my MacBook - around 35 GB worth. I deleted that backup from iCloud, and guess what? No more huge Other space. I restored my phone to its original state from my backup via iTunes and haven't had the problem since. The Other space stays well below 1 GB.

So if you are using the iCloud space like you would DropBox, forget it - it doesn't work that way and will take up a huge amount of space on your iPhone or other device.